On the IBM Walnut platform, using MontaVista Linux with 2.4.2 kernel, the box can route 10,000+ packets per second (pps) full-duplex continuously between the 405 on-board Ethernet port and an Intel 82559 PCI Ethernet card (500 byte packets).
With a similarly-configured 2.4.18 kernel, performance drops to ~6500 pps. Both Ethernet drivers are correctly calling consistent_sync(), so I don't believe it's a cache flushing issue. Using the 2.4.2 Ethernet drivers with 2.4.18 does not improve the performance, so I don't believe it's a driver issue. I'm at somewhat of a loss to explain such a large performance difference. Could the network stack have changed enough between 2.4.2 and 2.4.18 to cause this? MontaVista is "investigating", but I am wondering if any list members have run into this? Thanks for any information. Note: Testing was done with Smartbits. Joe Perri Senior Software Engineer > Viadux, Inc. > 9890 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 200 > San Diego, CA 92121 > 858-678-1634 > > ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
